Conspicuous consumption is over. It’s all about intangibles now
In the face of rising social inequality, both the rich and the middle classes own fancy TVs and nice handbags. They both lease SUVs, take airplanes and go on cruises. On the surface, the ostensible consumer objects favored by these two groups no longer reside in two completely different universes.

Forced into debt. Worked past exhaustion. Left with nothing.
A yearlong investigation found that port trucking companies have forced drivers to finance their own trucks by taking on more debt than they could not afford, used that debt as leverage to extract forced labor and trap drivers in jobs that left them destitute. If a driver quit, the company seized his truck and kept everything he had paid towards owning it.